With our economy on the brink, Americans need to cut spending and raise taxes. Sound impossible? Here's a way to forge a grand compromise between two warring parties

The budget is the main arena in which the nation as a whole decides on the allocation of resources. What we spend money on  and what we don't  reflects what we value as a nation. But making those choices isn't at all simple. It is in the federal budget that the breakdown of consensus in America is most vivid and most dangerous. One side of the political divide wants to cut taxes and shrink existing public services (including support for the poor) in the name of cutting wasteful government programs and insisting that the poor solve their...